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Nature Recovery Network

Nature Recovery Network

The Wildlife Trusts

A Nature Recovery Network

The idea of Nature Recovery Networks is to create linked corridors of environmentally rich habitat that allow plants and animals not only to thrive and spread but also making species more adaptable to change. These new networks will also and importantly over time be instrumental in helping tackle some of the big challenges from issues today such as climate change. Imagine new areas of flower rich meadow creating corridors for bees and butterflies, or new areas of hedgerow, woodland and wetland not just providing a home to wildlife but capturing carbon, improving water quality and helping protect landscapes from flooding and importantly all of this providing huge benefits to local communities where most people live their daily lives.

But we need new laws, including an Environment Act passed by the Westminster government, to ensure this happens. In it, local Nature Recovery Maps would be produced to achieve key Government targets for increasing the extent and quality of natural habitats, turning nature’s recovery from an aspiration to a reality.

Habitats are fragmented, there isn’t enough space for wildlife to move around, and many of our plants and animals are declining.

The Government is working right now on creating new laws – an Environment Act - to protect our country’s wildlife. We are telling MPs in Somerset that the laws must be strong enough to make sure wildlife thrives.

Measures

With your help, we can convince our politicians that the Environment Act must include three ambitious measures to properly protect nature and create a #WilderFuture:

Nature targets

We want the law to set Nature Targets, which are measurable benchmarks that politicians have to meet, like targets on clean air and water quality, or the creation of green space. Politicians will have to show that they are working to meet these targets.

Nature Recovery Network

The new laws must ensure the creation of a Nature Recovery Network. This will join up habitats and important places for wild plants and animals, allowing wildlife to move around.

To do this, a ‘Nature Map’ of the UK’s wildlife would be created, so we can work to connect habitats and ensure new property and infrastructure developments take account of the paths and corridors needed by wildlife.

It would include not only isolated nature reserves, but also parks, gardens, road verges, meadows, fields, waterways and other natural areas and links.

It would also mean creating green avenues and spaces, as well as green roofs, hedgerows, and natural unploughed ‘buffer’ zones on farm fields, to give wildlife space to thrive.

Nature watchdog

To make sure this happens, there must also be a strong, independent Nature Watchdog to hold politicians to account and to check that they are doing the right things to protect wildlife, such as hitting their Nature Targets. A watchdog would allow people to appeal bad planning decisions that might harm nature and would ensure local government only approves developments which provide new habitat and greenspace and create a ‘Net Gain’ for wildlife. In short, new developments would add more to wildlife than they would take away.

It's time to act

If we all tell our politicians to act for wildlife, they will have to listen.